If you can’t read my bad handwriting, here’s a very brief guide to recording hand claps:
1. Get several people in a small room with good acoustics.
2. Mic the room with a condenser mic.
3. Cup hands and clap. It’s better if someone is off tempo to make the clap thick.
The goal is to make a full sounding clap. The first time we tried this, it sounded thin and slappy.
Other tips and tricks:
- Mic the room, not the hands. Don’t clap too close to mic.
- You can record sever clapping tracks and mix them together to create a fuller clapping sound.
- Some say it’s good if some of the people clapping have bad rhythm. If they’re slightly off beat it will make the clap sound fuller. It’s not good to have three people with perfect rhythm all clapping together. It’ll just sound like a snare drum, not a real clap.
We’re working on a three or four song demo right now. The following songs will be on it:
- Golden Gate
- These Roads Won’t Last Long
- A Thousand Skins
- (Crash and Burn)
Last night Josh Holm and I recorded a shaker track and this Saturday we’re going to be enlisting the help of 3-4 people to lay some hand claps down.
There’s one rule imposed on the recording process, each person can only record with one instrument and one track of vocals. I recorded the guitar and lead vocals so now I’m done. I can’t do anything else. The idea is to enlist community involvement in the recording process.
We’re also currently enlisting people that play weird instruments (saws, triangles, oboe, lute). If you play, or know someone that plays, a unique instrument, please let us know.
Art is a conversation. It speaks to us, our conscious and subconscious. It creates a picture in our minds, painting with our imagination and experience. It binds memory with music, stories with color.
Art carves a cathedral out of the rock of our souls, chipping away at the hard, brittle death and building a sanctuary for God. Art inspires as it destroys.
True art is eternal. Paintings may decompose. Music may be lost in the churning passions of humanity. Sculpture might crumble. But the smooth marble in our souls will never be broken.
A painting is just a strip of canvas with colors on it. A symphony is simply vibrations passing through the air. Art is love. The one who hears and understands, who sees and knows, that person has become art.
this morning. I was driving to work, stopped at a red light, and I started to look at all of the other drivers in their cars. Most of them were alone–bad carpoolers! although, I can’t really talk–but there were a few retired couples. Then it hit me, I don’t know the last time I noticed there were real live humans in the cars next to me.
What a silly thing. It’s obvious, isn’t it, that there must be people driving the cars on the road, but I somehow submerged that little truth inside of me like a submarine disapearing in a swamp. I am the swamp.
I feel alone when I drive. I’m focused on myself, not the people next to me. I think about my music and my blog and my friends. I’m very ambitious.
It was refreshing today to notice that there were other people on the road with me. I got to spend a little time out of my own head and inside of theirs, and for a brief moment I was saved. Like a cool shower after playing basketball in the sun.
I played a few songs at my parent’s Easter dinner party this weekend. Playing acoustic for a few friends is one of my favorite things. There’s no pressure of putting on a big show. You’re not playing for strangers. It’s just fun.
I would love to play some house shows in the future. A house show is when someone invites 20 or 30 of their friends for live acoustic music. Everyone gives a donation of $10 or something and the performer plays for a couple of hours. I’m not a huge fan of clubs and bars so playing a show in someone’s home sounds so much more fun. Unfortunately, competition for established house venues can be intense.
This was written on Wednesday, March 5th.
I played at the Artfolk Open Mike at Muddy Waters last night. Some unbelievable performers play there every other week to just a handful of people. If you’re not busy in Santa Barbara on the first or third Tuesday of the month you should definitely go. I try to go at least once a month and am always impressed by the talent of the musicians.
My view of the role of the artist is shifting as I absorb a lot of the ideas in the blogosphere and in books, people like Seth Godin, Kevin Kelly, and Joe Taylor Jr. I’m starting to see the artist as a servant of the “tribe,” as Seth puts it.
The tribe needs the artist for entertainment and prophetic vision, but just as much, the artist needs the tribe’s enthusiasm, energy, and support. Last night, I needed–really needed–my friends Travis and Graham. I needed someone to play for. I needed someone to interact with my songs and join the conversation. I needed someone’s ears to try and make them happy.
An artist is only as good as those who love them. An artist can be good, great even, the best. But without people to play for, who’s minds are ready to hear them, their artistic seeds will fall on rocky soil and wither.
You can find countless artists throughout history who weren’t counted as successful until they had a great champion of their message, a critical voice in the masses, a curator who tells the world why they need to be listening to their artist.
Blake would have been nothing without Alexandar Gilcrist, the unexpected biographer of his life. The Beatles might have played in Liverpool and Hamburg for the rest of their lives without Brian Epstein. Jesus wouldn’t have been half as successful without John’s preparation and Paul’s translation.
Support your local artists. Be a curator. Discover new talent and tell your friends. The world needs fans just as much as artists.
By the way, here’s one of my favorite videos from ImprovEverywhere. I love it.
I don’t want to get in to the whole story of Osama’s latest rant, which you can find here, but I do want to raise one point. Osama’s main attack is on Pope Benedict, whom he accuses of supporting a “new Crusade.”
“You went overboard in your unbelief,” he says, “and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings.”
Here are some of my concerns:
1. This is over a couple of drawings!!! I know that Muslims take images very seriously and that making a cartoon of the Prophet is worse than burning an American flag, but how does this justify violence.
Have you ever seen those bumber stickers, “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind?” Most people miss the point behind this ancient Jewish law. It was a limit, not a requirement. An example, if you steal my goat, I can have one of yours of equal or lesser value, but not your whole farm. Or, if you knock my tooth out, I can knock yours out (the same tooth or smaller), or I can choose to forgive you. It’s a limit, not a law. If you went beyond that limit, it wasn’t justice and there were consequences.
How is violence just retribution for a drawing, even an insult against the Prophet. The most they should do is draw a profane image of the Pope or Jesus or something. The consequence is out of sync with the offense.
2. Bin Laden is educating the Pope on the etiquettes of dispute?! Sure, there have been some really awful popes in the past, but Benedict is a white haired theologian, a scholar, not exactly a warrior or revolutionary leader. The last person to talk about the “etiquettes of dispute” is Osama bin Laden.
3. Does he really mean that it’s not good fight etiquette to draw a picture, but it is ok to fly a plane into a building full of civilians? I don’t even have words.
I must be missing something. I just can’t understand his thinking. If anyone is out there that can explain it to me, I’m very open to hearing from you.
